Register EMC VSI / SIS With a vCenter HA Configuration

If you’re having trouble registering the EMC VSI appliance with your vCenter HA setup, here’s how to workaround it.

The SIS provider registration wizard picks up the incorrect IP address for vCenter. It grabs the first IP from vCenter. When trying to register the SIS provider, you’ll notice in the dialog box that it has picked up the address of your vCenter HA interface. This may not be an issue if your HA interface has an IP address that’s numerically higher than your vCenter address. Mine happens to be a subnet lower.

In order to work around this, you will need to add entries to the hosts file on the vCenter appliance. Get a console session to the vCenter appliance, and login with “root”. At the Command> prompt, type shell to go into the shell.

Use vi to create a host.conf file in the /etc directory.

Once inside vi, press i, and insert the following lines:

multi on

order hosts,bind

Your host.conf file should now look like this:

Save it by typing :wq

Then go edit your hosts file by typing vi hosts at the [/etc ]# prompt. Again, press i to edit.

Add your vCenter IP’s to the hosts file, making sure the vCenter IP is first, followed by the HA IP.

Save and exit.

Reboot the vCenter appliance.

Once it comes back up, go into vCenter and add the SIS provider again.

You should see both IP’s now, with a dropdown box. That way, you can select the correct one, and finish the SIS addition.

EMC says they are working on vCenter HA setups to get them working out of the box. For now, this workaround will suffice.